“You have been wonderfully kind--” he began. But she halted him abruptly. “We'll drop all that,” she pronounced, and deliberately lit a cigarette. A genuine admiration for her possessed Anthony; he recognized that she was extraordinarily good to look at; he had had no idea that so vigorous a spirit could have burned behind a becoming dress by Paret. He realized with a faint regret, eminently masculine, that other men, men of moment, would find her irresistibly attractive. Already it seemed incredible that she had ever been familiar, intimate, tender, with him. “You will be wanting to leave,” she said, rising; “--whenever you like. I have written for a--a chauffeur. I think you should have, it's twenty-five dollars, isn't it?” “Not twenty-five cents,” he returned. “I shouldn't like to force your delicate sensibilities.” She left the room. He caught a last glimpse of her firm, young profile; her shining, coppery hair; her supple, upright carriage. L IN his room he assembled the battered clothing in which Rufus Hardinge had discovered him, preparatory to changing from his present more elaborate garb, but a sudden realization of the triviality of that course, born of the memory of Annot's broad disposition, halted him midway. Making a hasty bundle of his personal belongings he descended from the tower room. Through an open door he could see the still, white face of the biologist looming from a pillow, and the trim form of a nurse. Thomas Huxley lay somnolently on the porch, beside Annot's coffee-colored wicker chair and a yellow paper book which bore a title in French. He paused on the street, gazing back, and recalled his first view of the four-square, ugly house in its coat of mustard-colored paint, the grey, dripping cupids of the fountain, the unknown girl with yellow silk stockings. Already he seemed to have crossed the gulf which divided it all from the present: its significance faded, its solidity dissolved, dropped behind, like a scene viewed from a car window. He turned, obsessed by the old, familiar impatience to hurry forward, the feeling that all time, all energy, all plans and thoughts, were vain that did not lead directly to---- A sudden and unaccountable sensation of cold swept over him, a profound emotion stirring in response to an obscure, a hidden cause. Then, with a rush, returned the feeling of Eliza's nearness: he _heard_ her, the little, indefinable noises of her moving; he felt the unmistakable thrill which she alone brought. There was a vivid sense of her hand hovering above his shoulder; her fingers _must_ descend, rest warmly.... God! how did she get here. He whirled about... nothing against the low stone-wall that bounded a sleepy garden, nothing in the paved perspective of the sunny street! He stood shaken, half terrified, miserable. He had never felt her nearness so poignantly; her distant potency had never before so mocked his hungering nerves.